Some conventional user interface methods provide a scroll bar for scrolling through pages of a document. For example, Microsoft Word is a word processing software program commercially available from Microsoft Corporation that use two scroll bars for scrolling through pages of a document. Typically in Microsoft Word, a vertical scroll bar is used to control movement or to scroll through lines and pages of a document, while a horizontal scroll bar controls movement through words in a line.
Such conventional scroll bar systems usually comprise two arrows and a slider. Each arrow controls which direction a user wants to scroll through a document. An arrow conventionally controls movement through a document in small increments or small blocks of information, such as individual lines or a page of a document, for example. Moreover, if an arrow points in the upward direction, the document will be scrolled from its present position in the document toward the first page. If an arrow points in the downward direction, the document will be scrolled from its present position in a document toward the last page of the document.
A slider is conventionally used to control movement through a document in larger increments than when the arrows are used. Instead of incrementing by small blocks of information, the slider typically controls movement through a document in larger blocks, increments or groups of information, such as two or more pages, for example. Therefore, when a user wants to go from the first page to the fiftieth page, the slider is usually selected and moved until page fifty is selected.
One of the disadvantages of conventional scroll bar methods is that a page of information is always displayed after a user presses a mouse button to select one of the scrolling features (i.e., slider, arrows) and then releases the mouse button. Conventional scroll bar methods lack the capability of disabling or hindering the display of unwanted pages of information when a slider of a scroll bar is unable to obtain an exact page. Such a situation is critical when a user wants to view a large document comprising many pages of information, but the scroll bar region or space is inadequate to represent all the pages of a document. In other words, conventional scroll bar methods make no allowance for fine adjustments of the slider value when the screen resolution is insufficient to yield the precise page the user may wish to obtain.
Suppose for example that a document had over one-hundred pages of information and a user wanted to display the seventy-fifth page of the document. However, the size of or number of pixels in the scroll bar region representing the one-hundred pages of information was small because the size of the corresponding window was small. Therefore, when the user moves the slider, the page number adjusts in increments of ten, thirteen or even twenty pages. The user is unable to move the slider of the scroll bar to the exact page because the screen and scroll bar resolution does not permit such a precise page selection.
When a user is unable to move the slider of the scroll bar to an exact page, the user must use a combination of the slider and arrows to incrementally obtain the desired page. This process results in displaying each of the incremental pages or unwanted pages of information. Such a process of displaying every incremental, unwanted page may waste a considerable amount of time if the user is connected across a network to a remote location. The reason is due to the time wasted in sending a request over the network, searching a database for unwanted pages and transmitting the unwanted pages to the user's remote computer. This process only clutters network traffic with unnecessary requests for information and reduces the speed of network coummunication.
Conventional scroll bar systems also are disadvantaged in that the page number is not continuously updated when the arrows are being used to scroll through text or pages of a document. For example, when a user selects one of the arrows by pressing a button on a mouse, the display begins to scroll through the text or pages of a document. However, the current page or position is neither updated nor displayed. When the button on the mouse is released by the user, the text stops scrolling and the page number will be displayed. Therefore, it is impossible to determine the current position or page within a document without releasing the mouse button.
Some conventional scroll bar methods that do not use a slider require that a user enter the number of the desired page or item. Such systems are archaic and inflexible because a user usually does not know which page contains the information the user wants.
Accordingly, there exists a significant need for a scroll bar method that permits a user to select an exact page of information when the region of the scroll bar is smaller than the total number of pages of a document and to display the selected page without displaying any unwanted pages of the document.